Josh - cool photos! Weddings are really fun when you have such a great location, and a cool couple to work with. Meet them when they were in the red a couple years ago.

Ption, yep KY is can be a very pretty place, no doubt. I ride my road bike through the middle of some very nice horse farms. Did you make it to the red?

Paul, Thanks much! I have really been off the 10fps a lot lately - going with single shot or with the low speed drive. But, there are some areas, like volleyball, that the speed really helps, as that ball can pass into and out of the frame amazingly quickly.

What technique and equipment do you use to get your old film scanned? I have a HEAP of old film and slides that I'd love to get digital.

btw... you guys all take brilliant pics. I think I need to upgrade the camera.

I have both a Minolta Scan Dual IV and a HP G4050.

I've had the scan dual since 2003, great scanner got it refurbed. It's a dedicated film scanner that can batch scan 6 negatives and 4 slides per batch. Basically not much but the quality is excellent, especially for the price I paid. For current film scanners or higher end stuff I like Minoltas 5400 but it's going to be used probably since minolta is gone. The Nikon Coolscan IV is also a nice looking scanner for the money.

The HP G4050 I just got. I have to say, DON'T even bother with it unless you budget the Silverfast SE (another $100) software into the price. HP makes quality hardware, but the software that runs it is always junk.

The reviews of the G4050 are all poor because of the software, but when you find reviews where people went with the silverfast to run it, they are overwhelmingly excellent.

Anyway, I got the 4050 because batch scanning on the Scan Dual was just ridiculous, considering most of my film scans will be nothing more than web photos.

The G4050 can batch scan up to 30 frames of print film (negatives) and 16 slides. I got it with the idea of basically scanning a roll per day (hasn't quite happened, but when I dedicate myself to it, it's possible). Put them in at night before bed, or in the morning before work and when I wake up or come home I have 16/30 fresh digital images archived.

A lot of my film is over 10 years old, so it's already begun to see some color shifts. This is annoying to say the least and not really a reflection of the scanner quality.

For $270 with the Silverfast I cannot complain. Other options are the Epson V700 and V500.

What technique and equipment do you use to get your old film scanned? I have a HEAP of old film and slides that I'd love to get digital.

btw... you guys all take brilliant pics. I think I need to upgrade the camera.

I have both a Minolta Scan Dual IV and a HP G4050.

I've had the scan dual since 2003, great scanner got it refurbed. It's a dedicated film scanner that can batch scan 6 negatives and 4 slides per batch. Basically not much but the quality is excellent, especially for the price I paid. For current film scanners or higher end stuff I like Minoltas 5400 but it's going to be used probably since minolta is gone. The Nikon Coolscan IV is also a nice looking scanner for the money.

The HP G4050 I just got. I have to say, DON'T even bother with it unless you budget the Silverfast SE (another $100) software into the price. HP makes quality hardware, but the software that runs it is always junk.

The reviews of the G4050 are all poor because of the software, but when you find reviews where people went with the silverfast to run it, they are overwhelmingly excellent.

Anyway, I got the 4050 because batch scanning on the Scan Dual was just ridiculous, considering most of my film scans will be nothing more than web photos.

The G4050 can batch scan up to 30 frames of print film (negatives) and 16 slides. I got it with the idea of basically scanning a roll per day (hasn't quite happened, but when I dedicate myself to it, it's possible). Put them in at night before bed, or in the morning before work and when I wake up or come home I have 16/30 fresh digital images archived.

A lot of my film is over 10 years old, so it's already begun to see some color shifts. This is annoying to say the least and not really a reflection of the scanner quality.

For $270 with the Silverfast I cannot complain. Other options are the Epson V700 and V500.

Sweet!! Thanks for the info! One day soon I'll need to get those old pics "modernized" before the film decays. I used to use Velvia a bit and those pics are more valuable to me.

Nice work Chanceboarder and Pico! Chanceboarder, did you use the vivid color setting on your D300 to get those saturated colors or did you use a photo editor? Thanks

Yeah the camera was set to Vivid and had an auto white balance set at A2. Normally I would never shoot people with the camera set in vivid since I think flesh tones look horrible, but the only flesh I was seeing with these guys were there hands and faces and I wasn't close enough to make that a big focusing point. I wanted the colors of those kayaks to really pop out at you.

All of them had levels adjustments in the post processing stage and a couple had adjustments to color or saturation. I've only gone through about the first 800 photos of the 1600 I shot for that weekend. Lots of near identical images though since I was shooting on CH for most of the time and I had the battery grip on there so it bumped my frame rate up some.

Love the macros, not crazy about the star shots. On one hand they are pretty cool, but the other they look noisy.

What ISO and exposure did you use? Lens?

We've all been there, I was all big on building my wide angle lenses for a long time, and then I wanted longer teles. Now I'm convinced I need a 90mm 1:1 macro in place of my extension tubes and belows!!!

The just released 35mm 1:1 Macro I am testing/reviewing for the next month might end up being a purchase as well, if only the 70mm wasn't already ahead of it. If only $1100 grew on trees!!

Love the macros, not crazy about the star shots. On one hand they are pretty cool, but the other they look noisy.

What ISO and exposure did you use? Lens?

Yeah, they're noisy all right. I kinda decided to go for the surrealistic look with them, so bumped the saturation and brightness right up. Experimental, as much as anything. There was no moon - good for stars, not so good for lighting up the foreground... anyway, I'll probably do some more playing around with the best of them, and try to find a more happy medium.

The lens was my 17-40 f4L, at 17mm and f4. Most of them are ISO 800 with bulb exposures (somewhere around a minute, but I was just timing by counting). A couple are ISO 1600 and 30 seconds. Bumped up something like 2 stops in the RAW converter. Looked ok on my home screen (although I was pretty tired, and it's not all that great a screen). Doesn't look quite so good now.

This is somewhat closer to what they looked like straight out of the camera:

Perhaps I'll find some time to do some masking and selective exposure adjustment.

I remember reading somewhere about instructions for adding Peltier cooling to a Canon 300D - would assuredly make a difference, but I think I'll wait until I can afford a spare...